Le néocolonialisme inter-culturel

Le racisme est une des idéologies néfastes qui semblent causer beaucoup de problèmes d’interprétation dans le monde actuel. À droite, à gauche et au centre de l’échiquier politique, des gens “ordinaires” aussi bien que des grands intellectuels ont souvent beaucoup de difficulté à bien cerner le sens de la hiérarchisation raciale, qui peut dépendre de la discrimination favorable à un groupe “racial” désigné, autant que de la discrimination contre un autre groupe. Bien sûr, dans tous les cas, tous les groupes humains aimés ou détestés en tant que “races” ne sont que des constructions idéologiques, puisque le phénomène “race” n’existe pas du point de vue biologique. Malheureusement, le racisme semble s’appliquer aussi à la discrimination culturelle, les gens racistes voulant disséminer depuis quelque temps leur idéologie devenue honteuse derrière un écran plutôt translucide de hiérarchisation culturelle.

Un aspect très important de la réalité idéologique, qui est à l’origine de plusieurs de ces problèmes d’interprétation du racisme, est la division historique entre le monde occidental et le monde “oriental”, ou non-occidental. Pendant la période dite coloniale, du 15e au 20e siècles, plusieurs pays impérialistes provenant de l’Europe ont fondé des grands empires coloniaux dans plusieurs régions non-européennes. Ces empires ont fait la conquête, complète ou partielle, de la quasi totalité des autres civilisations humaines, sur tous les continents. La plupart de ces conquêtes sont devenues des colonies de pillage, établies en Asie, en Afrique, en Amérique latine et même en Océanie, ce qu’on appelle encore de nos jours le tiers-monde. Le but initial de ce colonialisme a été de piller des ressources naturelles de ces très nombreux pays, mais ces mêmes empires ont aussi pillé la force de travail de plusieurs millions d’esclaves (sans salaires) de ces pays colonisés, ainsi que de plusieurs millions d’autres travailleurs sous-payés.

Ces empires européens ont aussi fondé plusieurs colonies de peuplement, surtout en Amérique du Nord, en Sibérie et en Australasie, envoyant dans ces régions plusieurs millions d’Européens “en surplus”, fortement encouragés (souvent par la famine) à émigrer vers ces colonies. Après quelques décennies, ils sont devenus la majorité de la population dans plusieurs de ces colonies, les populations autochtones ayant été largement fauchées entre-temps par des épidémies importées, des famines et du mauvais traitement, comprenant de nombreuses tentatives de génocide.

Parmi ces pays impérialistes, dominant chacune des deux sortes de colonies, il y avait non seulement le Portugal, l’Espagne, les Pays-Bas, la France, la Grande-Bretagne et la Russie, mais aussi la Belgique, l’Italie et l’Allemagne. En cours de route, quelques petites colonies de peuplement, établies sur la côte atlantique de l’Amérique du Nord, se sont fusionnées ensemble pour devenir les États-Unis d’Amérique, un pays qui s’est rapidement devenu un nouvel empire occidental vers la fin de cette même période coloniale. D’autres anciennes colonies de peuplement, qu’on appelle de nos jours le Canada (et le Québec), l’Australie et la Nouvelle-Zélande, ont pratiqué une forme de colonialisme plutôt régional. Pour sa part, le pays qu’on appelle aujourd'hui la Russie fédérée comprend encore la plupart des colonies (de pillage et de peuplement partiel) de l’ancien Empire russe, qui se transformait pendant quelques décennies en Union soviétique (1922-1991).

Par la suite, la plupart des anciennes colonies de pillage ont inauguré un processus, souvent très violent, de décolonisation politique, surtout centré en Amérique latine au 19e siècle, mais centré davantage en Asie et en Afrique au 20e siècle. De nos jours, toutefois, le monde occidental continue de pratiquer très souvent un néocolonialisme axé sur la domination économique. Même des pays n’ayant jamais été des colonies formelles (politiques) des pays occidentaux, tels que le Japon, la Chine, la Turquie, la Perse (l’Iran) et la Thaïlande, ont subi des périodes plus ou moins longues de néocolonialisme économique. Le Japon, économiquement dominé par plusieurs pays occidentaux entre 1854 et 1899, a néanmoins réussi au 20e siècle à devenir le premier pays asiatique à établir son propre empire colonial (moderne), en imitation de l’Occident, jusqu’à la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Ce même pays pratique encore de nos jours une forme de néocolonialisme économique dans quelques-unes de ses anciennes colonies formelles, souvent en association avec les États-Unis.

Pour sa part, la Chine a pris un siècle (1842-1943) pour sortir de la division de son territoire en trois zones économiques, imposées par des empires étrangers (la Grande-Bretagne, la France et la Russie, dont la place a été repris en cours de route par le Japon). Après la guerre civile de 1945-1949, la plupart de la Chine, devenue la République populaire, a retombé brièvement sous la domination politique et économique de l’URSS, jusqu’en 1960, tandis que l’île de Taiwan, occupée par l’ancien gouvernement “nationaliste”, est restée une néo-colonie des États-Unis. À partir de 1979, cependant, la Chine populaire a décidé d’accepter son nouveau rôle subalterne (néo-colonial), de réserve principale de travail industriel sous-payé pour les pays les plus riches du monde capitaliste, dans le but de devenir le nouvel ”atelier du monde”. De nos jours, elle a même réussi à utiliser ce grand développement industriel pour participer, elle aussi, à la domination néo-coloniale de plusieurs autres pays de l’ancien tiers-monde, en concurrence avec le Japon et les pays occidentaux. Tout en modernisant encore davantage son économie nationale, et ses forces militaires, la Chine essaie ces jours-ci de mettre l’accent sur le développement de son marché interne.

Malheureusement, toute cette histoire de domination occidentale, coloniale et néo-coloniale, ainsi que toutes ces tentatives, réussies et moins réussies, des autres pays du monde à sortir de cette domination étrangère, ont amené plusieurs millions de gens, et même plusieurs dizaines d’historiens professionnels, à adopter des interprétations erronées (mythiques) de certaines réalités politiques, économiques et sociales de notre monde. Ce n’est que récemment que quelques historiens révisionnistes ont entamé un processus de déboulonnement de ces nouveaux mythes historiques, les remplaçant par des interprétations beaucoup plus réalistes.

Un premier exemple de ce genre de déboulonnement a été l’analyse du phénomène historique de l’esclavagisme sur une plus longue échelle du temps. On a découvert que la traite des esclaves dans la région du monde qui a le plus souffert de ce phénomène destructeur, l’Afrique noire, n’a pas commencé avec les interventions occidentales. Il y avait d’abord la traite intra-africaine, les fondateurs de plusieurs grands royaumes et empires africains pratiquant l’esclavagisme à la grande échelle avec des victimes provenant d’autres peuples africains conquis par leurs armées. (Comme plusieurs autres empires l’avaient déjà fait autrefois dans d’autres régions du monde). Cette traite intra-africaine a continué à exister pendant la mise sur pied de deux nouvelles traites, d’origines extra-africaines, fournissant souvent des victimes à ces nouveaux trafiquants. La traite intra-africaine semble exister encore, même de nos jours, surtout dans des états échoués comme la Somalie, en dépit des lois récentes, adoptées par tous les pays africains actuels, interdisant ce genre de trafic humain.

Ensuite, une deuxième traite des esclaves africains, celle des empires musulmans, a commencé très rapidement après la conquête arabe du nord de l’Afrique, pendant les premiers siècles de l’expansion militaire de l’Islam. Cette deuxième traite a impliqué autant de millions de victimes que la première traite et a aussi continué pendant plusieurs siècles, avant de diminuer d’importance récemment. Plusieurs millions de ces esclaves africains ont été obligé de travailler à l’extérieur de l’Afrique, surtout en Asie occidentale. De nos jours, les gens riches et puissants de plusieurs pays majoritairement musulmans, surtout en Asie occidentale encore, maltraitent plutôt des travailleurs sous-payés provenant de pays asiatiques non-musulmans, davantage que ceux provenant encore des pays africains.

La troisième traite, celle des empires occidentaux (de l’Espagne, du Portugal, de la France, de la Grande-Bretagne, des Pays-Bas, des États-Unis et même brièvement du Brésil indépendant), impliquant autant de victimes que les deux autres mais concentrée sur un plus petit nombre de siècles, est celle qui comprend surtout la traite transatlantique. En Amérique, les esclaves africains remplaçaient les esclaves amérindiens fauchés par des épidémies importées, et parfois délibérément répandues, en Amérique par les Européens, la plupart de ces esclaves travaillant davantage en Amérique latine et dans les Caraïbes, qu’en Amérique du Nord.

Voilà le genre de déboulonnement de mythes que la nouvelle histoire, axée sur l’analyse du monde entier vu comme un ensemble, est capable de faire. Essentiellement, ce qu’on découvre dans chaque cas est que le colonialisme d’origine occidentale, et son pendant néo-colonial aussi, ne sont pas des phénomènes exclusifs à l’Occident, bien que cette région est certainement responsable des formes d’impérialisme, et de néo-impérialisme, particulièrement néfastes. Un deuxième exemple des découvertes de cette histoire universelle concerne des empires anciens qui ont existé longtemps avant le début de l’expansion occidentale, ainsi que des empires plus récents, mais d’origine non-occidentale, qui ont continué à exister, en dépit de tout, pendant la période d’expansion occidentale.

Récemment, à partir de 1945, pendant la deuxième période de décolonisation du tiers-monde, plusieurs historiens occidentaux, indignés par des cas très nombreux de crimes contre l’humanité commis par les empires occidentaux, ont attribué (de manière anachronique) à certains empires non-occidentaux des comportements moralement supérieurs. Ils ont attribué à l’ancien empire maya, par exemple, en Amérique centrale, des comportements beaucoup plus pacifiques et non-violents que des comportements des empires occidentaux. Par la suite, on a découvert que les conquérants mayas n’étaient pas du tout pacifiques, mais en réalité aussi violents, ou encore plus violents, que des conquérants de plusieurs autres empires du monde.

En dépit de ces découvertes, toutefois, certains historiens continuent à nier cet aspect de la réalité. Aussi récemment qu’en 1992, par exemple, l’historien canadien Ronald Wright a publié un brulot (Stolen Continents: The ‘New World’ Through Indian Eyes Since 1492) dans lequel il a dénoncé avec virulence la conquête européenne de l’Amérique, en prétendant encore que toutes les civilisations amérindiennes, précolombiennes, s’entendaient bien entre eux, longtemps avant leur premier contact avec les envahisseurs occidentaux. Ce qui est archi-faux.

En réalité, depuis les premiers jours d’existence de notre espèce, il y a 200 000 ans, la quasi totalité de toutes les sociétés pré-urbaines, ainsi que la quasi totalité de toutes les grandes civilisations urbaines qui existaient au monde pendant plusieurs millénaires avant l’expansion européenne, ont engendré des milliers d’invasions répétées et de conquêtes successives, impliquant plusieurs milliers de peuples rivaux. Il n’y avait presque aucune région du monde dans laquelle le même peuple s’est installé une fois pout tout, dans une même région depuis toujours, ne faisant face à aucune tentative violente de la part d’un peuple étranger visant à prendre le contrôle de cette région, appartenant initialement à un peuple véritablement autochtone. En d’autres mots, tous les peuples autochtones de toutes les régions n’étaient pas si “natifs”, “indigènes” ou “autochtones” que cela, quand les envahisseurs européens sont arrivés. Tous les peuples humains ont guerroyé entre eux, surtout pour des raisons territoriales, pendant des dizaines de milliers d’années avant l’expansion européenne. On continue encore de découvrir de nouveaux exemples de telles invasions aujourd’hui.

Ce qui distingue des empires occidentaux de tous les autres empires conquérants du monde, ce n’est donc pas leur niveau toujours plus élevé d’agressivité, ou d’immoralité, mais plutôt le caractère mondial de leurs conquêtes pendant cette période d’expansion relativement récente, impliquant par le fait même de cette mondialisation davantage de régions, et de peuples, victimes. Même l’intensité de pillage de leurs colonies n’a pas toujours été plus forte que l’intensité de pillage de tous les empires précédents, ou même que des autres empires concurrents, non-occidentaux. Les empires non-occidentaux ont aussi établi leurs propres colonies de peuplement, tout comme leurs propres colonies de pillage, avant l’arrivée des empires occidentaux, pendant cette même expansion européenne, et encore pendant les périodes de décolonisation (anti-occidentale) récentes.

C’est la raison pour laquelle il est arrivé souvent que la plupart des gens “ordinaires” des civilisations conquises par l’Occident ont adopté assez rapidement une attitude de résignation passive vis-à-vis de leurs nouveaux conquérants. Non seulement parce que leurs rébellions successives ont été régulièrement écrasées, mais aussi parce qu’ils avaient déjà connu des dizaines d’autres empires conquérants de par le passé. Cette résignation (temporaire) est aussi arrivée, pendant quelque temps, parce que ces empires occidentaux, comme plusieurs autres empires précédents, ont très fortement encouragé les anciens dirigeants des empires déjà établis auparavant, à collaborer avec eux dans l’exploitation continue de ces mêmes gens ordinaires (paysans, artisans, esclaves, etc.).

Au début du 20e siècle, par exemple, les quelques 60 000 Britanniques (civils et militaires) installés en Inde n’auraient jamais pu dominer totalement les 300 millions de sujets indiens de cette époque, comme ils l’ont fait, sans l’aide de plusieurs millions de collaborateurs locaux. Ceux qu’on appelle souvent dans les livres d’histoire des “compradores”, c’est-à-dire des marchands et des notables “autochtones” ou “indigènes” (du point de vue des dirigeants occidentaux), qui aidaient les nouveaux conquérants occidentaux à bien contrôler la population locale, comme ils l’avaient fait eux-mêmes, directement, avant l’expansion européenne. Avant l’arrivée des nouveaux maîtres occidentaux, les mêmes populations locales travaillaient pour ces mêmes marchands et notables quand c’était eux les grands dirigeants des empires pré-occidentaux.

Bien sûr, tous ces dirigeants en série, les pré-occidentaux et les occidentaux eux-mêmes, profitaient toujours de toutes les divisions politiques, sociales, religieuses et culturelles de toutes les populations conquises. Comme par exemple les divisions entre les populations hindoues, musulmanes, sikhs, et celles de toutes les autres religions minoritaires, dans les Indes britanniques. L’armée des Cipayes, par exemple, sous le contrôle de la Compagnie britannique des Indes orientales, a copié la pratique des empires précédents (tels l’empire moghol) en utilisant des mercenaires provenant des religions minoritaires dans des régions dominées par une religion rivale, majoritaire.

Ce genre de collaboration établie pendant la période coloniale (de domination occidentale) existe toujours de nos jours dans la période actuelle, dite néo-coloniale. On forme même de nos jours des nouvelles alliances entre un (ou plusieurs) néo-empires occidentaux et un (ou plusieurs) pays non-occidentaux, qui possèdent parfois des buts convergents avec l’Occident. Ainsi, par exemple, les États-Unis d’Amérique collaborent depuis 1945 avec l’Arabie saoudite, depuis l’alliance “contre-nature” entre le président américain, Franklin Roosevelt et le roi Saoud de la famille royale qui possède, littéralement, l’Arabie saoudite. Cette alliance, établie initialement pour des raisons de vente pétrolière et de protection militaire, continue encore de nos jours, dans le but de maintenir la domination conjointe de ces deux empires sur toute la région du Moyen-Orient.

La coopération entre ces deux pays impérialistes est un excellent exemple de comment le néo-colonialisme occidental a réussi à co-opter encore des collaborateurs locaux, comme la monarchie absolutiste de l’Arabie saoudite, dans leurs nouveaux projets de domination mondiale. Depuis des siècles, dans tous les pays à majorité musulmane, par exemple, les empires britannique, français et américain (en particulier) ont très activement encouragé la montée d’un islamisme ultra-conservateur, souvent terroriste, pour les aider à lutter contre l’influence anti-occidentale des mouvements nationalistes et communistes. Tous les régimes ultra-conservateurs du monde musulman ont entré en collaboration, à un moment donné ou un autre, avec au moins un pays impérialiste du monde occidental.

Avant la révolution islamiste en Iran, les États-Unis avaient réussi à collaborer à la fois avec des pays musulmans sunnites (comme l’Arabie saoudite) et shiites (dont l’Iran), comme en témoigne l’ancienne alliance entre l’empire américain et le Shah d’Iran entre 1953 et 1979. Depuis la révolution islamiste de 1979 en Iran, toutefois, les États-Unis ont tendance à privilégier leurs liens avec les pays sunnites, surtout les plus conservateurs entre eux, en tentant d’isoler l’Iran autant que possible du reste du monde. La tentative récente du président néolibéral des États-Unis, Barack Obama, visant à rétablir des liens avec l’Iran, a échoué aussitôt que son successeur néo-conservateur (néo-fasciste), Donald Trump, a pris le pouvoir. De nos jours, l’Iran collabore davantage avec la Russie, un autre empire d’origine occidentale, dirigé ces jours-ci par le régime de Vladimir Poutine, dont l’orientation idéologique ressemble, toutefois, beaucoup plus du point de vue de Trump que de celui d’Obama.

Pendant tout ce va-et-vient géopolitique entre des factions divergentes des grands empires, cependant, il ne faut pas perdre de vue l’essentiel de toute cette histoire. Le fait reste que tous les empires occidentaux, y compris la Russie, collaborent avec des régimes réactionnaires du monde musulman (entre autres) quand ça fait leur affaire. Les États-Unis peuvent bien renforcer leur alliance avec l’Arabie saoudite, en dépit du fait qu’ils savent très bien que certains princes de la famille royale de ce pays ont été très fortement impliqués dans la formation de groupes terroristes, tels qu’Al-Qaeda et l’État islamique. L’Arabie saoudite, après tout, pratique une forme de salafisme religieux pratiquement identique à celle de ces deux groupes, qu’on peut aussi qualifier de néo-fascistes.

Ce pays, et ses alliés régionaux tels que les Émirats arabes unis, peuvent bien dénoncer les liens très forts entre l’Iran et d’autres organisations du terrorisme islamiste, comme le Hezbollah et le Hamas, et essayer très fort d’isoler la principauté de Qatar pour cette raison. Ils peuvent aussi dénoncer le Qatar pour avoir appuyé des formes souvent non-terroristes d’ultra-conservatisme religieux, comme les Frères musulmans, au pouvoir en Égypte avant le coup d’état militaire de la dictature actuelle. En ce faisant, cependant, ils font preuve d’un niveau d’hypocrisie extrêmement élevé. Et cela même si leur niveau d’hypocrisie n’est pas vraiment plus élevé que l’hypocrisie des pays occidentaux (les États-Unis, la Grande-Bretagne, la France, l’Allemagne et le Canada) qui vendent de plus en plus d’armes sophistiquées à l’Arabie saoudite et à d’autres pays partageant la même idéologie.

En parlant d’hypocrisie, toutefois, rien au monde ne bat l’attitude de certains de ces mêmes pays occidentaux concernant leurs propres “atouts” terroristes. Le gouvernement conservateur de Theresa May en Grande-Bretagne, par exemple, a été très ébranlé par la décision du gouvernement Trump aux États-Unis, de rendre public le fait que le terroriste islamiste Salman Abedi, responsable de la mort d’au moins 22 Britanniques en mai dernier à Manchester, pouvait entrer et sortir librement du Royaume-Uni pendant les semaines précédant son attentat terroriste.

Le journaliste australien bien connu, John Pilger, a aussi révélé que ce même Abedi profitait de ce statut spécial parce qu’il était toujours un “atout” des services de renseignement britanniques. Qui l’ont utilisé encore récemment en Libye, aussi bien qu’en 2011, lors de la destruction programmée du régime Kadhafi, l’ancien dictateur d’un des états du tiers-monde actuellement transformé en état échoué, divisé entre plusieurs gouvernements rivaux, parce que jugé autrefois trop indépendant de l’Occident. Le même sort ayant subi l’Iraq de l’ancien dictateur Hussein, en 2003. Les révélations de Pilger ressemblent beaucoup aux accusations livrées autrefois par cet ancien politicien marginal des États-Unis, Lyndon Larouche, qui a fondé un groupuscule d’extrême-gauche pendant les années 1960 et 1970, avant de le transformer en groupuscule d’extrême-droite pendant les années 1980.

Le gouvernement de la Grande-Bretagne a probablement pensé jusqu’à récemment que sa politique multiculturelle d’”accommodements raisonnables” avec toutes les communautés d’immigration récente habitant son territoire, dont les communautés musulmanes, aurait pu la protéger des attentats islamistes comme ceux qui ont frappé d’autres pays occidentaux. Les attaques récentes, toutefois, ont démontré l’inefficacité totale de cette politique, au moins en ce qui concerne les groupes les plus radicaux parmi les salafistes. Même la suspension des lois sociales britanniques pour le “bénéfice” de ces communautés musulmanes, et leur remplacement par la sharia particulièrement rétrograde et misogyne, n’a eu aucun effet positif.

La complaisance officielle envers le terrorisme “islamo-fasciste" n’est pas du tout une bonne stratégie, pas plus en Occident qu’ailleurs, surtout pas dans des pays à majorité musulmane. Tous les ennemis du terrorisme, de quelque origine que ce soit, devraient plutôt dénoncer la très grande violence politique de tous ces groupes meurtriers. Ils doivent également dénoncer le terrorisme d’état, comme les bombardement aériens contre des civils, pratiqué régulièrement par les armées de plusieurs grands pays occidentaux, y compris la Russie, ainsi que par Israël et par plusieurs dizaines d’autres pays, dans toutes les régions du monde actuel.

Tous les gens non-violents devraient aussi abandonner leur appui “nostalgique” même d’anciens mouvements terroristes qui ont aussi existé en Occident autrefois, tels que le Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), qui a beaucoup affaibli le mouvement indépendantiste dans ce pays, apparemment avec la complicité de la Gendarmerie royale du Canada. Ou l’IRA (“Irish Republican Army”), qui a beaucoup contribué à la popularité des politiciens aussi antédiluviens que Margaret Thatcher en Grande-Bretagne.

Ce commentaire s’applique aussi aux anciens mouvements terroristes d’autres pays du monde non-occidental, tels que les “Tigres tamouls” de la minorité hindoue au Sri Lanka, ainsi que le terrorisme d’état du gouvernement de la majorité bouddhiste dans ce même pays. Ou les mouvements terroristes appartenant à la communauté sikh en Inde ainsi que le terrorisme d’état de ce pays, appartenant davantage à la majorité hindoue. Peu de gens savent, par ailleurs, que ce qu’on appelle “le plus grand attentat terroriste de l’histoire du Canada” a été perpétré par des terroristes sikhs, contre un avion civil d’Air India rempli de citoyens canadiens d’origine hindoue, partant de Toronto, Ontario, en 1985.

Bien sûr, la collaboration actuelle entre le néocolonialisme occidental, et les régimes, ou les mouvements, les plus réactionnaires du monde non-occidental, n’est pas du tout confiné aux pays majoritairement musulmans. Le gouvernement Trump aux États-Unis coopère aussi très bien ces jours-ci avec le gouvernement actuel de l’Inde, du nationaliste hindoue Narendra Modi. Chacun de ces deux gouvernements a récemment adopté une forme particulièrement féroce de néolibéralisme, favorisant ouvertement les grands investisseurs capitalistes de leur pays respectif, tout en essayant de diminuer, ou d’éliminer complètement, des programmes sociaux visant à soutenir les gens les plus pauvres de chaque pays. Chacun des deux a aussi adopté, simultanément, une sorte de politique ultra-conservateur, ou néo-fasciste, dirigé contre l’ensemble des minorités ethniques et religieuses de chaque pays, autrefois un peu mieux traitées par des gouvernements précédents, autant en Inde qu’aux États-Unis.

Le même genre de collaboration entre le néo-colonialisme occidental et le néo-conservatisme non-occidental se développe également dans toutes les autres régions du monde actuel, telle que l’Amérique latine. Au Mexique, par exemple, les cartels de la drogue de ce pays profitent énormément de la corruption et de la complaisance étatique envers leur violence inouïe, ainsi que du marché énorme pour leurs produits aux États-Unis. Les grandes industries américaines, profitant beaucoup elles aussi des bas salaires des ouvriers mexicains, juste au sud de la frontière américaine, font pression sur leur propre gouvernement pour s’assurer que la répression du trafic de la drogue illégale reste assez efficace pour maintenir les prix des produits illicites assez élevés, mais pas trop efficace pour diminuer de beaucoup ce même trafic.

Parlons aussi du Brésil, où la grande majorité de tous les politiciens sont totalement impliqués dans un énorme scandale de pots-de-vin autour du cartel national du pétrole et de plusieurs autres grandes corporations brésiliennes. Désigné dans des journaux comme “le plus grand scandale de l’histoire mondiale”, cette affaire affecte non seulement la plupart de l’économie brésilienne, mais implique aussi la plupart des autres pays de l’Amérique latine, ainsi que plusieurs dizaines de grandes banques et de corporations industrielles de l’Occident (dont la compagnie britannique Rolls-Royce). Ce même scandale a aussi eu des répercussions néfastes dans plusieurs pays africains. C’est un peu similaire (en beaucoup plus grand) au scandale de la compagnie canadienne de gestion de projet SNC-Lavalin, qui a impliqué plusieurs autres pays en Afrique (dont la Libye du colonel Kadhafi), et qui continue à causer des difficultés majeures encore aujourd’hui pour cette compagnie multinationale.

Cette liste d’exemples de formes de coopération entre le néo-colonialisme occidental, et les régimes les plus conservateurs de l’ancien tiers-monde, n’est pas du tout complète. Il y a encore beaucoup d’autres exemples dans toutes les régions du monde, impliquant toutes les cultures et les religions existantes. Les idéologues du multiculturalisme, toutefois, essaient de nous faire croire que c’est plutôt le “racisme systémique” du néo-colonialisme occidental qui est derrière chaque dénonciation régulièrement effectuée par toutes sortes de commentateurs, de toutes les formes du “fascisme oriental” dans ce monde, telles que le terrorisme islamiste. Selon les fondateurs de cette idéologie, telles que le philosophe canadien Charles Taylor, pour éviter complètement l’influence du néo-colonialisme occidental, chaque culture non-occidentale doit nécessairement rejeter tout le discours moderniste d’origine occidentale, et trouver toutes les réponses de ses problèmes actuels, exclusivement à l’intérieur de sa culture spécifique.

Selon Taylor et ses sbires Michel Seymour et Georges Leroux, en cherchant son salut dans le monde actuel, la communauté musulmane, par exemple, doit obligatoirement ne faire référence qu’aux textes sacrés de l’Islam d’autrefois et n’a pas le droit de profiter des idées “occidentales” de modernisation progressiste. Un point de vue quasiment identique à celui des salafistes actuels. En réalité, cependant, le vrai néo-colonialisme occidental aime bien les idées réactionnaires de ces mêmes salafistes, et celles d’autres mouvements réactionnaires parmi les autres traditions culturelles. Plutôt que d’être éclairant, ce multiculturalisme idéologique est plutôt un bon exemple, avant la lettre, des “faits alternatifs” à la Donald Trump, renversant complètement la réalité et disant exactement le contraire de ce qui se passe vraiment dans ce monde.

Il ne faut pas oublier non plus que dans beaucoup de régions du tiers-monde, ce qu’on appelle souvent des “pratiques culturelles barbares” sont encore très répandues. Des millions d’immigrants provenant des mêmes régions continuent même de pratiquer ces comportements aujourd’hui, à l’intérieur de plusieurs pays occidentaux. Ces pratiques provenant d’une autre époque comprennent des meurtres pour préserver “l’honneur” des familles “trahies” par les femmes adultères, des mariages forcés entre des jeunes filles et des vieux hommes, l’excision du clitoris, la peine capitale pour l’apostasie, la lapidation des albinos et des “sorcières”, et beaucoup d’autres pratiques semblables. Ce qui s’ajoute à la liste “normale” d’autres pratiques aussi barbares que ces régions partagent avec toutes les autres régions du monde, comme la prostitution forcée (l’esclavagisme sexuel), le travail forcé des enfants, les femmes battues, les enfants soldats, les enfants violés par les hommes de leurs familles, ou encore les enfants violés par les prêtres de plusieurs religions différentes, et ainsi de suite.

Pour essayer de lutter contre de telles pratiques, ainsi que de l’ensemble de tous les autres comportements géopolitiques mentionnés plutôt, provenant de toutes les régions et de toutes les cultures du monde, il me semble que c’est la démocratie sociale qui est la réponse la mieux adaptée à régler tous ces problèmes nombreux. Tout en s’assurant, bien sûr, de ne pas empirer l’équilibre déjà très fragile entre le développement humain et la détérioration continue de notre environnement naturel, une détérioration qui, sans être arrêtée, rendrait impossible tout le progrès possible vers la démocratisation sociale. Il faut aussi éviter la fausse démocratie sociale des partis officiellement appelés encore “socialistes” ou “sociaux-démocratiques”, qui ont abandonné ce point de vue depuis longtemps, au profit du néolibéralisme. À mon avis, pour bien mettre en pratique une véritable démocratie sociale dans toutes les régions de notre planète, il faudrait d’abord réduire énormément le très grand écart de revenu actuel entre les classes sociales, c’est-à-dire entre les quelques individus qui gagnent entre 20 et 30 millions de dollars par jour, et les centaines de millions de gens qui ne gagnent encore que d’un ou deux dollars par jour.

Deuxièmement, il faut aussi promouvoir l’égalité réelle entre les hommes et les femmes dans tous les domaines, pour de vrai et pas du tout d’en parler constamment sans rien faire de concret pour la réaliser, comme le gouvernement canadien le fait ces jours-ci. Troisièmement, promouvoir aussi l’égalité de traitement entre toutes les “communautés culturelles”, celles qui sont majoritaires quelque part au monde et celles qui sont minoritaires, à l’intérieur de chaque pays. Plutôt que d’obliger chacune des ces communautés à’ériger des barrières culturelles étanches entre elles, à la manière suggérée par l’idéologie réactionnaire du multiculturalisme.

Pour atteindre ce dernier objectif, il faut renverser la prétention “naturelle” de chaque communauté culturelle à se considérer meilleure que toutes les autres. Le néo-colonialisme occidental doit abandonner toutes ses tentatives de domination politique, économique et culturelle des autres pays. Mais les collaborateurs ultra-conservateurs du même néocolonialisme, provenant des autres pays réactionnaires, comme le capitalisme d’état en Chine populaire, le wahhabisme en Arabie saoudite, le nationalisme hindoue en Inde ou la corruption à la grande échelle au Brésil, doivent aussi abandonner leurs propres prétentions de grandeur régionale, ou même mondiale dans certains cas.

Pour sa part, l’Occident, qui se targue souvent de mieux traiter les femmes et les minorités que n’importe quelle autre région du monde, ne peut plus de nos jours se vanter de vouloir diminuer encore l’écart de revenu entre les classes sociales, comme il l’a fait autrefois pendant les “Trente glorieuses” (1945-1975). Cette prétention occidentale à un meilleur comportement social dans les deux autres domaines de la démocratie sociale peut très bien aussi dépendre davantage de la richesse relative de l’Occident (d’origine néo-coloniale), par rapport aux autres régions du monde, que d’une réelle propension culturelle envers le progrès social. Mais ce qui élimine complètement les prétentions progressistes de l’Occident par rapport aux autres cultures du monde, c’est encore davantage sa politique étrangère, et surtout son alliance continue avec tous les régimes les plus réactionnaires du monde non-occidental, que j’ai évoqué tantôt. Son hypocrisie dans ce domaine est sans équivalent nulle part au monde.

Il reste que toutes les prétentions des autres cultures de ce monde, quant à leur propre supériorité morale vis-à-vis de chaque culture rivale dans le palmarès mondial des supériorités réclamées, ne sont pas plus fondées que celles de la culture occidentale. C’est vrai par rapport à tous les cas de collaboration avec le néo-colonialisme occidental déjà mentionnés, aussi bien que des visées impérialistes, propres, de plusieurs pays non-occidentaux, comme celles du Japon, de la Chine, de l’Inde, de l’Indonésie, de l’Iran, de l’Arabie saoudite, du Maroc, du Nigéria, du Brésil ou de l’Afrique du Sud. Entre autres.

Même des peuples qu’on appelle autochtones ou indigènes se targuent souvent de posséder eux-mêmes de la vraie supériorité par rapport aux autres cultures, par exemple en se vantant souvent de pratiquer des comportements plus écologiques que ceux des cultures rivales. Le problème avec cette prétention, c’est le fait que tous les peuples autochtones sont loin d’être du même avis par rapport à l’environnement naturel (comme tous les autres peuples, d’ailleurs). Dans la confrontation récente de Standing Rock, par exemple, autour de la construction d’un oléoduc en Dakota du Nord (États-Unis), plusieurs groupes autochtones dénonçaient publiquement ce projet, et manifestaient bruyamment contre tout cela, comme il se doit. Malheureusement, plusieurs autres peuples autochtones de la même région ont appuyé fermement ce même projet, pour des raisons économiques, même si leur point de vue n’a pas été aussi souvent diffusé que le message écologique des protestataires. D'ailleurs, on ne peut pas vraiment conclure quoique ce soit concernant le point de vue des milliers de peuples autochtones du monde entier sans effectuer une vraie étude d’envergure mondiale là-dessus. C’est fort probable, toutefois, qu’ils sont aussi divisés, partout où ils se trouvent, que toutes les autres cultures actuelles.

En fait, aucune culture humaine qu’on connaît ne peut vraiment prétendre à une supériorité généralisée par rapport à toutes les autres cultures, au moins sur le plan moral. En ce qui concerne les trois éléments de la démocratie sociale que j’ai mentionné tantôt, aucune culture ne sort du peloton par rapport à une prétendue supériorité morale là-dessus. Le néocolonialisme inter-culturel, impliquant finalement toutes les cultures existantes, ne peut pas être combattu, encore moins éliminé, sans un effort énorme, concerté à l’échelle mondiale entre toutes les cultures. Dans le climat politique actuel, avec la domination idéologique du néolibéralisme et du néo-fascisme, les probabilités pour une résolution positive de cette impasse me semblent très limitées de nos jours.

Pour y arriver quand même, il faudrait réunir tous les efforts des pays et des mouvements indépendantistes, favorables à la démocratie sociale, et les encourager à remplacer la compétition militaire entre les pays par une compétition pacifique, chacun essayant d’aider les gens les plus pauvres et les moins puissants de son propre pays, encore davantage que les autres pays progressistes du monde. Il n’y a que ce genre d’émulation pacifique qui pourrait venir à bout de toutes ces tentatives de domination de la part de toutes les forces réactionnaires de ce monde.

Dark pools of iniquity

I just finished reading a book by François Morin, L’hydre mondiale: L’oligopole bancaire (“The banking oligopoly: a global hydra”), that was published in 2015. Morin is a distinguished professor of economics at the University of Toulouse in France, who also used to be a member of the “Conseil général” and the “Conseil d’analyse économique” of the Bank of France. He dedicated his book to the research program in political economy (LEREPS), to which he belongs, and to the memory of Bernard Maris, his former colleague in the same program who was assassinated by Islamic terrorists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris (2015).

Morin’s book is a very convincing attack on the (at last count) 28 major banks in the world (eight from the USA, 16 from Europe, three from Japan and one from China), that have taken over almost total control of the world financial system since the mid 1990s. Although there are over 40 000 banks on this planet, only those that belong to this world-wide oligopoly of financial institutions control not only the most important official markets, such as the bond market, but also most of the unofficial markets, like shadow banking and the “dark pools” of high-frequency trading. The currency market, with its unbelievably huge volume (thirty times greater than the World Bank figure for total world GDP), is also firmly under their collective control, giving them an overwhelming influence on the setting of exchange rates between the world’s most important currencies. Institutional collaboration between all those banks, which is deliberately overlooked in most purely quantitative economic analyses of such phenomena, also means that they have complete control as well of the most important interbank markets (Libor, Euribor, Tibor).

They also have a much greater influence on the setting of interest rates than do the overrated central banks, like the USA’s Federal Reserve, still officially “in charge” of that all-important function. In addition, the same private banking oligopoly also controls the astronomically large derivatives market, set up to protect investors from risk after all the world’s neoliberal governments collectively decided to abandon state control, and almost all useful regulation, of world financial markets. In other words, for ideological reasons, they simply handed all that responsibility over to the private sector, and the oligopoly-hydra was the inevitable result.

According to Morin, the total worth, on and off the official balance sheets, of those 28 colossally large banks, in 2012, was 50 000 billion dollars, a sum more or less equal to the total accumulated public debt of the world’s 200 nation-states. The afore-mentioned debt having accumulated especially rapidly in recent years, when the world’s governments and central banks tried to mop up the gargantuan financial crises caused by the afore-mentioned oligopoly, during and after the Great Recession of 2008. In 2013, the so-called notional value of all the market contracts covered by the world’s financial derivatives amounted to 710 000 billion dollars, about ten times as much as total world GDP in 2012. (That same notional value was only about 500 billion dollars back in the 1970s.) Apparently, the banking oligopoly’s off-balance derivatives these days are worth 15 times as much as the official on-balance-sheet figures. In 2017, two years after Morin’s book was published, those numbers have undoubtedly increased to even higher figures than the ones just mentioned.

All the members of that enormously powerful financial cartel are theoretically considered “too big to fail”, at least since the 2008 crisis. During that colossal upheaval, when Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail anyway, the ensuing panic came very close to destroying the world financial system completely. Which means that very few people in power tend to object when most of the world’s governments spend most of their time nowadays competing with each other to attract foreign investment, by cutting taxes on the world’s most important banks and multinational corporations, or allowing them to avoid paying taxes altogether. Not to mention trying to pay for all that largess by imposing austerity on all government spending not directly related to bailing the “corporate welfare bums” of Big Business out of whatever colossal crises they keep on causing.

Needless to say, in order for a system like this one to function at all requires fantastic levels of denial, most of the world’s governments, central banks and international regulatory institutions, constantly proclaiming that all is well, that the lessons from the 2008 crisis have all been learned, and that no such “accident” could every happen again. The most important traders, who still see themselves as “masters of the universe”, are convinced that they can all get away with driving up short-term profits as high as they want, forever and ever, since all the public institutions in the world seem to agree that unlimited “private enterprise” is the only way to run the world economy. Even when officially recognized criminal elements are constantly being protected by such “borderline” banks as the British-based HSBC.

Morin’s remedy for this completely unprecedented financial boondoggle is a return to days gone by, with the return of government control over the entire financial system, fixed exchange rates and the like, as prevailed in the world’s most prosperous countries from 1944 to 1971, before the inflation crisis of the 1970s touched off the neoliberal counter-revolution. His proposals also include the abandonment of the US dollar as any kind of international reserve currency and its replacement by a new kind of non-exclusive, common currency, similar to the one that Keynes was proposing back in 1944. But Morin is not foolish enough to believe that such a remedy would be willingly accepted under current conditions. The only event that might eventually bring about any kind of re-nationalization of world finance would be an economic catastrophe of colossal proportions. Like the one that Morin believes is going to take place, just as soon as traders tied to the 28-bank oligopoly run out of any further options and push profit maximization beyond the physical limits of the world economy.

Unfortunately for everyone on this planet, Morin is convinced that even after such a collapse, it would still take a certain amount of time just to get the neoliberal paradigm out of all the rich and powerful people’s (brainwashed) heads. During which time, an enormous escalation of the current epidemic of “radicalized”, ethnic-nationalist and religious identity projections would probably plunge the world into an aggravated dystopia of external and internal geopolitical confrontations, accompanied by several new financial crises. Which would not only be an unprecedented disaster in itself, but would also rule out any possible financing of the ecological transition our planet so urgently requires. For him, it would be much better if a mobilized citizenry obliged the people in power to adopt his suggested reforms before the final blow-out of the world financial system, even though that does not seem very likely.

That entire relationship between the banking oligopoly and the world’s most important governments reminds me a lot of the lyrics in one of Gordon Lightfoot’s popular songs, “That’s what you get for loving me” (1966). It may very well have been the most unloving love song ever written, telling the all too typical story of a very unequal tryst between a hippy philanderer and, presumably, a much too trusting young woman. “Everything you had is gone, and you can see, that’s what you get for loving me.” (Most such narcissistic philandering is of male origin, but quite a few women are also capable of behaving in the same uber-egotistical fashion.)

The fact that most governments in the 1970s decided to abandon the “thirty glorious years” of joint public-private control over the world economy, in favour of total privatization and individualization of almost everything, has now come back to haunt us all. As in the song, they initially decided to jettison government “intervention” into the economy altogether because they naively believed that trusting one’s partner completely was, after all, the right thing to do. But their only reward for being so totally infatuated with their demon lover has been an unending series of financial disasters: the inflation crisis, the public debt crisis, the private debt crisis, the public austerity crisis and the biggest income gap in human history, between the ultra-rich overclass and the ultra-poor underclass. Not to mention the upcoming collapse in every kind of financial investment, which will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a Sunday school picnic by comparison.

Come to think of it, “that’s what you get for loving me” is also an appropriate metaphor for the similarly unequal relationship between all the world’s right-wing populist regimes and the much-maligned “ordinary people” who have been expertly manipulated into supporting such regimes. Supposedly in order to free themselves from the politically-correct “liberal elite” that set up the thoroughly anti-democratic banking hydra, and still officially runs such plutocratic “democracies” as Canada, Britain, Australia and most of the countries within the neoliberal European Union. The world’s best-known example of right-wing populism nowadays is the increasingly unstable “Trump-ocracy” in the USA, still desperately trying to make its erratic control over that huge country complete, and permanent. A process that all started last year, when most of his 63 million voters, from the stagnating middle-class, suffering from zero real income increases since 1972, suddenly agreed with that atavistic billionaire that white supremacy, old-time religion and traditional misogyny were really good formulas for making America great again.

In so doing, the Trump movement has allied itself ideologically with a grab-bag of previously established populist regimes (“illiberal democracies”, “electoral theocracies”, constitutional monarchies and “popular dictatorships”), all trying to make dozens of other empires great again, in such otherwise dissimilar countries as Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Serbia, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Myanmar and Indonesia. Right-wing populism has also overtaken several EU member nations, such as Hungary and Poland, as well as having a very strong influence in Japan. In hindsight, even the State-capitalist dictatorship in China seems to have been following a similarly populist strategy since its divorce from Mao Ze Dong-thought during the late 1970s. The only thing bringing all those countries together in the same list being their disparate attempts at combining imperial regeneration, religious revival and (slightly-disguised) neoliberal elitism, with phoney promises of “liberation from liberalism” based on an endless series of confabulated “alternative facts”.

“That’s what you get for loving me” even seems to apply to the slightly-undercover support given to the Islamic terrorist movement by many different Muslim states, especially the theocratic, absolute monarchy known as Saudi Arabia, and its Sunni-Muslim allies, including the military dictatorship in Egypt and the little group of feudal Gulf states under Saudi influence. Which helps to explain the recent diplomatic rift between that group of countries and the Qatari regime, which allegedly crossed a line recently by supporting terrorism even more than it had before, and also adopting an even more accommodating approach toward the Shiite-Muslim countries, led by Iran. At least, that’s what Donald Trump himself supposedly told the Saudi king a week before the rift, apparently passing on “proof” of those allegations that was reportedly supplied by ubiquitous Russian intelligence. Not to forget that the unconditional support the USA has always given to Saudi Arabia, at least since 1945, is a lot like the unconditional support it has also given to Israel, at least since 1967, both American policies contributing greatly to keeping the Middle East a very dangerous place in which to live.

In reality, for the past several years, more than a few Muslim countries, not just those in the Middle East, have been involved, to a greater or a lesser extent, in officially fighting against, while unofficially supporting, all the different Islamic terrorist organizations that have so far been set up. The Saudi regime in particular has been using both hard power (terrorism) and soft power (funding schools in many different countries to teach Wahhabism) to make sure that its ultra-conservative version of Islam will be adopted, first by all Muslims, then by all human beings forced to choose (as supposedly happened several centuries ago), between conversion to the “appropriate” form of Islam, and instant death. Several Shiite regimes, particularly in Iran, also have their own version of this apocalyptic vision of the future, but the fact that only about 15% of Muslims have adopted Shiism means that their support for their own Islamic-terrorist organizations has had a lot smaller impact on the world. In any case, even when officially “hidden”, the love tryst between Islamic terrorism and many Muslim governments still looks a lot like the lyrics of the Lightfoot song.

Finally, the same metaphor may also apply to yet another form of iniquity that seems to be developing around the so-called “fourth industrial revolution”, the one involving artificial intelligence (AI). Up until the present, the use of robots to replace human labour in many different industries and services has been billed as an extremely positive tendency, liberating workers from doing the kinds of often boring, often dangerous, tasks that can now be done by machines instead. Thereby allowing millions more people to spend a lot more time in much more fulfilling leisure activities. Which sounds like nothing more than an older version of Donald Trump’s “alternative facts” as soon as one realizes that the real reason for robotics is the same as the real reason for shipping industrial jobs to low-wage countries, namely making a lot more money for really rich people, and a lot less for everyone else.

Many leading lights in the AI movement also seem to be implementing their fourth industrial revolution by using rhetoric that closely resembles the language used to promote free trade and the replacement of the welfare state by a “much more efficient” use of capital. In other words, artificial intelligence is being turned into an important new branch of neoliberal elitism, in which the world’s smartest people will use their increasingly intelligent, robotic allies so as to even further downsize the already downtrodden.

Some of them are even advocating a guaranteed annual income (GAI) for “displaced persons”, the same ones that sociologist Saskia Sassen calls “excluded people”, displaced by “parallel power”. But neoliberal AI advocates also want to “help those people help themselves” by keeping the GAI at a very low rate, even lower than the sums paid to today’s austerity-ridden welfare recipients. Instead of allowing billions more people to finally enjoy more leisure time, this would oblige all those “useless eaters” to scrounge around in the “informal economy”, like most of the population of India is already doing, to provide them with just enough income to ensure mere physical survival. Those who “refuse” to scrounge “efficiently enough” will be free to starve to death, like such unworthy people have always been allowed to do in the past.

AI may therefore be used to take neoliberalism to a whole new level of iniquity, thereby greatly intensifying the current trend among “socioeconomic refugees” to seek their own artificial happiness, not just by taking drugs, but by supporting even more intensive forms of populist neofascism than they are currently supporting. Which will also fulfill François Morin’s prediction about an enormous increase in ethnic-nationalist and religious identity projections, military confrontations and even more disastrous financial crises. And also resembling the lyrics of “That’s what you get for loving me” even more starkly than in any of the other metaphorical comparisons mentioned earlier.

The rule of law or the rule of class?

I read an article the other day in the Montreal newspaper, La Presse (May 13, 2017), about the rule of law. One of their regular columnists, Yves Boisvert, was trying to claim that the recently fired director of the FBI, James Comey, owed his allegiance to the US Constitution, not to that country’s ultra-egotistical president, because the USA is a democratic country, practising the rule of law. Unfortunately for Boisvert, and for Comey, “the rule of law” is really just another overworked expression, used by people who truly believe in the political ideology known as liberalism. Thoroughly convinced liberals contend instead that the rule of law has to be seen as some kind of absolute principle in all, self-proclaimed liberal-democratic countries. They obstinately refuse to recognize that it is in fact just another political slogan, like “the dictatorship of the proletariat” in self-proclaimed communist countries, or “the will of Allah” in the equally self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate.

In the real world, however, also known as “le monde tel qu’il est” (René Lévesque), expressions like “the rule of law” only work whenever some rich and/or powerful person, or group, wants them to work, but not at all whenever such a powerful individual, or group of powerful individuals, prefers to ignore them instead. It simply is not true that no one is above the law. No political document, such as the US Constitution or the Canadian Bill of Rights, whenever or wherever adopted, truly guarantees anything at all, but only possesses the force of persuasion that any particular VIP, or group of VIPs, allows it to possess. In other words, whenever it happens to be in the best political interests of some particular group of dominant people to follow that particular principle. While it it true that some countries apply such formulas more often than do other countries, since no country has ever been truly run by ordinary people, it is impossible to presume that any human institution of any sort will always do the right thing in every case.

Constitutions are always being interpreted differently from one powerful person to another, or even from one particular situation to another, during any given mandate. All over the world, constitutional “guarantees” are sometimes being observed, and sometimes being ignored, depending on which particular event is being analyzed. As many US citizens found out recently, when Donald Trump’s businesses were seen to be profiting from certain foreign emoluments, it turns out that even the article in the US Constitution prohibiting such emoluments has never been applied to any real situation since it was first written down. The written word only means something to people who want it to mean that particular something. It has nothing whatever to do with whether or not a given situation is more or less complicated than any other one. As Machiavelli pointed out several centuries ago, all political situations are always “complicated” by the fact that no VIP wants to be tied down to any predetermined course of action.

Unfortunately, no threshold exists beyond which it is impossible for some dominant individual, or organization, to go. In every case, not just in “failed states” or “straightforward” dictatorships, but also in self-proclaimed democracies, might makes right. The richer and the more powerful someone is, or some private or public organization is, the more that that individual or organization gets to ignore any kind of collective agreement. No matter whether it is just an “ordinary” collective agreement between a trade union and an employer, or a supposedly “much more important” UN Security Council resolution, or even an international climate treaty.

The only people who have to obey the law all the time are those who are too poor, or too powerless, to make their “equality before the law” plea heard in high places. Only “lesser” people cannot get away with ignoring any of the laws, established by their “betters” to keep them in their not-so-high places. For their part, higher-ups can pretty much do whatever they want. In some countries, even ruling-class people may have to maneuver a bit in order to get around theoretical restrictions, but the lesson of history is that they always manage to do so if they try hard enough. The rule of law is a lot like taxation, in that those who run the system can always find a way out of the maze.

This sort of thing is proved over and over again, all over the world, whenever some less fortunate person, or group of people, finds out that they simply do not have the money, or the clout, necessary to take someone to court and thus to obtain some sort of justice. Enormous differences in income or in social status make it impossible for most people to get anywhere near equal consideration in legal disputes. Even in the so-called rich countries, such as Canada or the USA, the vast majority of the population does not have anything like an equal chance, or an equal opportunity, to make their voices heard.

In the field of industrial relations, in particular, collective agreements are quite often ignored, much more often by companies, or by neoliberal governments, than by the unions involved. Some trusting souls try to argue that in certain countries, certain union appeals to the court system, to overturn some employer’s arbitrary decision, sometimes result in damages being awarded to some union. At least, once they have been accepted by a judge to have been in fact contrary to some collective agreement. Such cases, however, are quite rare, and in most of those rare cases, token damages are only awarded after the union has spent an enormous sum of money on litigation. Most of the time as well, such damages are only awarded twenty or thirty years after the litigation began, therefore rendering the final result totally irrelevant to the initial situation. Money makes the world go round, not principle. As the gospel according to Matthew tells it, the more money one has to start with, the more of it one gets later on, and the less one has in the beginning, even that small amount is eventually taken away.

Populist politicians all over the world, such as Montreal mayor Denis Coderre, honestly seem to believe that even traffic cops “belong to” their VIP employers, not that both low-ranking and high-ranking public officials are all supposed to serve the people together. In any particular situation, such as the disastrous floods that took place recently in and around the city of Montreal, such politicians are always heard proclaiming that “today is not about pointing fingers”, it is only about “coming together for the common good”. In other words, no one over a certain income level, certainly no one in power, is ever supposed to be blamed for anything at all, not today and not tomorrow either. So far as the VIP-serving legal system is concerned, the only people who should ever be held to account for their crimes are the ordinary John Does who always make up the vast majority of every country’s prison population.

In other words, the rule of law almost always turns out to be the rule of social class. This has become increasingly obvious in recent years, the news media in many parts of the world finally catching onto the fact that up-to-date “white-collar crime” has become a whole lot more damaging to society (and to the world economy) than old-fashioned “blue-collar crime”. The media have also started to catch onto the fact that white-collar criminals are much less often caught, or punished in any way, than the blue-collar kind. Some white-collar criminals, such as Bernard Madoff in the USA, have been sent to jail recently, in cases when their victims have included people even more powerful than themselves. But when the white-collar criminal turns out to be a billionaire “pillar of the community”, not to mention the president or the prime minister of some presumably liberal-democratic country, catching a crook suddenly becomes a whole lot more difficult. Even if caught red-handed, putting such a person in jail, especially for a period of time appropriate to the seriousness of the crime, is practically impossible.

Moreover, governments all over the world are constantly ignoring their own laws all the time. Almost every day, some journalist investigating some scandal somewhere or another discovers the existence of some obscure law that everyone had conveniently forgotten about ever since it was adopted. Governments are regularly being called to task for refusing to apply some law that they initially adopted five, ten, twenty or more years ago, in order to gain a lot of political mileage back then. Not actually implementing such laws later on simply means that legislation is often ignored in the same way as election promises are ignored once the election is over. Every day, international treaties are also being signed, without any guarantees that any of their particular clauses will ever be implemented. Big governments, like big businesses, have all been practising the art of “newspeak” (otherwise known as “alternative facts”) ever since they first came into being several millennia ago.

One of the more recent inventions in the long list of methods involving deliberate, official ignorance of the law has been the increasing inefficiency of the legal system in dozens of different countries. The recent trend of settling every possible difference of opinion between VIPs in court, and of corporate defence lawyers coming up with hundreds of increasingly complicated delaying tactics in every case, has bogged the “legal industry” down in totally unrealistic wait times. In Canada, the Supreme Court has come up with equally inapplicable guidelines, designating periods of months or years during which all cases must be decided upon, before being abandoned. Unfortunately, the only discernible outcome of such guidelines has been the freeing of hundreds of probably guilty criminals, including more than a few accused murderers connected to organized crime.

It should not be too difficult to imagine what that sort of thing has done to the already sufficiently undermined, liberal pretensions about the rule of law, not only in Canada but in most other places. This is in addition to all the social laws being ignored by certain immigrant populations, at least within the group of countries that allow any type of immigration to exist. The more tolerant countries often end up allowing such immigrant populations to ignore their own established laws, importing instead “barbarian cultural practices” from abroad such as female excision, forced marriages and the use of both modern and traditional methods to ensure that most families within those immigrant populations end up with thirty or forty percent more boys than girls. Most of those practices are also theoretically illegal in most of the home countries where such practices originate.

Even though, on the face of it, those practices seem to be impervious to social divisions within those communities, a deeper understanding of the social realities within such populations reveals that they are all symptoms of ultra-severe control over subject populations. Control ingrained for centuries in those selfsame populations by ultra-conservative VIPs who make Donald Trump look like a rank amateur by comparison. What initially seems to be an exception to the rule of social class triumphing over the rule of law, turns out to be merely the world’s most extreme example of that same VIP domination.

To be sure, the world might seem be a much better place in which to live if the rule of law really did triumph over the rule of class. Unfortunately, it does no one any good whatsoever to pretend that it really does.

Fake facts forever

Trump adviser Kelly-Anne Conway’s recent “invention” of alternative facts is not much of a discovery, since fake facts have been around just about forever. For at least the past 6000 years, since the first urban-based civilizations started setting up shop all over the world, ideological controversies have broken out between the aristocratic rulers of succeeding dynasties and rival empires. As well as between those same secular rulers and the equally aristocratic power bases constructed by the priestly elites controlling each succeeding religion, embedded within each one of those empires.

Over the centuries, those rivalries have generated millions of conflicting messages constantly being sent out, in every form of iconographic communication known to exist during each succeeding period of history, to firmly impress on every subject population just how much more glorious each ruler “obviously” was when compared with each real or potential challenger. In every part of the world, history has been invented, and re-invented, over and over again, the wealth and the power of each succeeding empire and religion always depending on its capacity to convince millions of ordinary people that the universe itself was created precisely so that each competing group of rulers could always demonstrate, beyond the shadow of any popular doubt, just how incredibly appropriate its control of everything important in their lives really was. As Percy Shelley pointed out so succinctly in his poem, “Ozymandias”, each succeeding message from each ruler was nothing but an enormous ego-projection, always based on constructed “facts” that did not really prove what they were intended to prove.

As far back as ancient Greece, more than 2500 years ago, the founders of rationalist philosophy first began attacking the foundations of all this official narcissism by emphasizing the colossal differences between natural, material explanations of reality and the faith-based anthropomorphism of traditional Greek mythology. This led directly to the well-known ideological showdown between Socrates and the Athenian rulers, who forced that early philosopher to drink poison as punishment for his alleged “moral corruption” of Athenian youth. A similar confrontation also took place many centuries later between the Italian Renaissance scientist, Galileo Galilei, and the equally powerful inquisitors of the Catholic Church. Not to mention the “monkey-trial” condemnation of American schoolteacher, John Scopes, for having illegally taught Darwin’s theory of evolution to high-school students in Tennessee back in 1925.

Science and religion have therefore been presenting alternative sets of facts for thousands of years, with more and more civilizations gradually joining in to add their own contributions to that ongoing war between competing visions of reality. Starting out in the physical sciences, this same conflict also eventually spread to most of the social sciences, non-scientific secular ideologies soon receiving the same skeptical treatment from the scientific community that all the world’s religious mythologies had previously received. In the scientific presentation of reality, no particular facts are accepted as such unless initial hypotheses, based on William of Ockham’s practice of presenting the simplest possible hypotheses first, are tested over and over again by independent researchers all over the world. All of them, or almost all of them, as a family of researchers, have to reach similar conclusions after confronting each successive hypothesis with multiple interrogations grounded in the observation of nature and the duplication of extremely well-prepared experiments. Only then do some of those proposed facts become real facts, at least until the next scientific revolution, instead of fake ones.

On the other hand, in religious discourse, or in any other unfounded ideological interpretations of presumed reality, true believers are expected to accept such outlandish concepts as, for example, the virgin birth of the son of God (Christianity), or as a second example, the “sui generis” formation of public virtue arising spontaneously out of private vice, “as if by an invisible hand” (Adam Smith). In all such cases, unnatural concepts like those ones are always given or revealed by some “higher power”, without any of those lazy people having to use the much more laborious scientific method. For its part, religious belief is based entirely on faith, which means, as Martin Luther explained it, the voluntary renunciation of human reason common to all truly religious communities. It should therefore come as no surprise to anyone that political concepts such as Conway’s “alternative facts” have a tendency to crop up nowadays especially in regions of the world most afflicted by the presence of large concentrations of religious fundamentalists, offering literal interpretations of sacred writings, such as the Bible Belt in the USA and similar areas of “rural idiocy” inside dozens of other countries.

Faith is also the main ingredient involved in the ideological concoctions of such secular religions as Adam Smith’s economic liberalism (founded back in the eighteenth century) and its current offspring, known as neoliberalism. In spite of its universal pretensions, most of today’s economic “science”, like “Christian science” or “Islamic science”, is still almost exclusively based on attempting to “prove” an assumption that is scientifically impossible to prove, like economic liberalism’s contention that the world’s largest accumulations of capital were gathered together in a humanitarian attempt to provide jobs for the unemployed! Rather than to admit that profit maximization and capital accumulation in reality have a lot more to do with the cynical erection of Ozymandian phallic symbols of egotistical, brand-name power, such as Donald Trump’s ubiquitous towers.

True believers in religious fiction, and other non-scientific alternative facts, are constantly being trotted out to provide enormous doses of competing varieties of ideological opium, in order to help unscrupulous political rulers control hundreds of millions of ordinary people, and keep them “in their place” socially speaking. Nowadays, all the world’s most important concentrations of wealth and power are always run by extremely “radicalized”, professional propagandists whose single-minded dedication to profit maximization and state power help “maintain order”, and ensure that democracy in any real sense is never allowed to take power and privilege away from those who are convinced that only they truly deserve to dominate others. Alternative facts are absolutely necessary, therefore, if one’s goal is to present authoritarian and/or totalitarian regimes as being somehow synonymous with freedom from social constraint and the tranquil practice of individual human rights uncorrupted by collectivist chimeras. Even in theoretically socialist and communist countries, such chimeras are only supposed to be gobbled up by ordinary working people, not by their “more intelligent”, elitist rulers.

A good example of “alternative facts” being used nowadays, “even” by anti-Trump forces in the USA, was the recent attempt by liberal scribes in that country to provide a diplomatic justification, to explain why American leaders over the past forty years avoided accusing the People’s Republic of China of committing highly successful currency manipulation. According to the liberal media, the USA’s laissez-faire attitude toward Chinese economic policy in the past was only adopted in order to help that country enter peacefully into the “international community”, led by the USA, and therefore to contribute greatly to world economic and political progress. The real reason for that deliberate policy vacuum, however, had nothing to do with promoting democracy or development. It was done simply to encourage the use of cheap foreign labour, making thousands of billions of dollars more money for unpatriotic American investors, by reversing the tendency that US workers had developed before the Chinese onslaught, towards improving their overall wages and working conditions. As Calvin Coolidge pointed out back in the 1920s, “the business of America is business”, it has nothing to do with making the world a better place in which to live for “inferior” people. In the real world, neither the liberal-Democratic nor the conservative-Republican tendencies within American politics are genuinely concerned with democracy as such, but only with its usefulness as a manipulative slogan to help out their respective friends in the business community.

I got my own introduction to the use of alternative facts 50 years ago, in April of 1967, when I was arrested along with several other people, for trying to burn a US flag during an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in Toronto. When my arrest came to trial, the police attempted to present the burning of that flag as a crime, not because there was any law in Canada about committing such a symbolic deed. Instead, their take was that burning that foreign flag could have become a public danger, setting fire to the flowers growing in the concrete bins the city had planted in the median separating the four lanes of traffic on University Avenue, next to the US consulate! Which only goes to show, just like in the previous example, that the reasons why people in power claim to be doing whatever they are doing are not always terribly convincing, in spite of their self-proclaimed tendency to describe themselves as generally more intelligent than everyone else. Nowadays, Donald Trump has been coming up with dozens of similar explanations for his own erratic behaviour, that are not any closer to reality than the arguments invented by the Toronto police force during the incredibly violent Vietnam War, most of whose millions of victims were killed from the air by US forces.

Which does not necessarily mean that people opposed to the current domination of most of the world by private capitalism are always less inclined to use alternative facts in their own propaganda. I just finished reading a recently-published book by Gilles Morand, L’époque était rouge: Militer au Québec pour un avenir radieux dans un parti marxiste-léniniste, about the five years he spent as a young man in Quebec during the late 1970s and early 1980s trying to help build the Workers’ Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), before it fell apart shortly thereafter. He was one of several hundred young people lured into one of the tiny ultra-communist groups in Quebec during that period, some of whom sincerely thought that they could actually bring about a radiant new future for the Canadian working-class. Most of them ended up following the teachings of such people as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, while others accepted the first three guys, but substituted Trotsky for both Stalin and Mao. None of those groups ever got anywhere near their intended goals, their main effect on the history of Quebec probably being to slightly diminish the nationalist influence of the Parti Québécois prior to and during the 1980 referendum on Quebec sovereignty.

As Morand himself points out in his book, Marxism-Leninism was only a pipe-dream in North America, even during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the subsequent liberal-communist alliance during the latter phase (1941-1945) of the Second World War. Nevertheless, militants like him did manage in a few cases to get themselves elected, sometimes openly, into positions of trade-union leadership among select groups of real workers, even during his period of militancy. In his case, it seems that he actually managed to contribute to a successful union campaign for job-site safety in a munitions plant in the city of Valleyfield, well-known at the time for frequent explosions that killed several workers. For awhile, according to his account, the workers managed to force the company to drastically change its extremely unsafe practices that had caused those explosions. Later on, however, the collapse in union militancy throughout North America during the rise of neoliberalism (starting in 1979 and continuing to this day), that also contributed to a decline in the already-weak popular support for socialism and communism, resulted in the subsequent return of traditionally lax company attitudes toward on-the-job safety.

I remember reading several newspaper reports back then about how industrial safety was strengthened in Quebec throughout the 1980s, but I strongly suspect that any decline in industrial accidents and deaths during recent decades, in any of those industries, was caused instead by the closing down of most of the important factories in Quebec, and in the rest of the Western world, because of delocalization and de-industrialization. Nowadays, after several decades of neoliberalism, on-the-job deaths are definitely on the rise again in Quebec and in most other places. Many new deaths are also being caused by increasingly unsafe conditions in the transportation of dangerous chemicals, as in the 2013 deaths of 47 citizens in the village of Lac-Mégantic, when a petroleum train left unattended wiped out most of the downtown core. As was the case in Valleyfield almost forty years ago, most company officials and their government allies are blaming that “accident” on negligent workers, rather than on their own corporate negligence.

Government and company promises to re-route the train tracks around the village, rather than right through it, have been totally ignored since that horrendous event and it certainly does not look at this point in time that anything will ever be done, anywhere, to prevent any future “incidents” of this kind. Union militancy in Quebec may still be slightly greater than elsewhere in North America, but it remains a shadow of its former self. Part of the problem, as in most of the other continents, is in the much greater efficiency of today’s “alternative facts” in inducing everyone to accept their fate, most of the time, without getting terribly upset about supposedly “inevitable” accidents, or any other negative events. The problem with that attitude is, as it always has been, that most of the world’s “accidents”, including “ordinary” car accidents, happen for a reason. Quite often, they are nothing but “accidents waiting to happen”, caused by “collective” (i. e., official) negligence much more often than by individual negligence.

To be sure, a large part of the forty-year decline in on-the-job militancy, in most parts of the world, was also caused by the tremendous hypocrisy of totalitarian communism. The Leninist “dictatorship of the proletariat” has always been just another slogan invented by professional liars every bit as cynical as Donald Trump, long before he or his favourite groupie, Kelly-Ann Conway, were ever born. None of the Leninist governments in the world have ever been anything but State-capitalist caricatures of private capitalism, government bureaucrats simply replacing the private bureaucrats of “regular” capitalism, and behaving just as badly toward the 99.99% of the population who do not belong to the privileged minority.

I visited the incredibly beautiful city of Prague recently as a tourist and went to their “Museum of Communism”, set up not so long ago by an ultra-right-wing American political science professor whose ludicrous display of primitive anti-communism was just as insanely one-sided as the equally dumb-ass, pro-Soviet propaganda that the Czech communist regime was displaying during its period of totalitarian power. Neither the official communist point of view presented in the displays, nor the official anti-communist point of view written on the side panels in that museum, would help any intelligent person figure out why anyone in his or her right mind could ever be so asinine as to support either one of those two completely unrealistic systems of belief.

How are we supposed to choose between the Bhopal “accident” of 1984, in an American chemical factory situated in India, and the Chernobyl “accident” of 1986, in a nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine? In what way has the world improved since the fall of totalitarian communism, if similar “accidents” are still killing thousands of people in countries like Bangladesh, which specializes in making textile products for Western companies? As if this was not already a big enough problem, in tragically real terms even more than in the illicit use of propaganda, it has also been complicated a bit further recently by Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, getting into the act. Her own line of clothing, produced in the same incredibly hypocritical, Third World sweatshop conditions as the clothing lines of all the other foreign producers, turns out to be in total contrast with her own stated goal of trying to help salaried women “liberate” themselves from their own self-imposed wardrobe limitations. She does not seem to be terribly worried about the rather more serious “shopping issues” of the severely underpaid women she exploits every day.

The total contrast between ideology and reality not only applies to all the propaganda debates between private capitalism and state capitalism, it also applies just as much to the current propaganda exchanges between “Eastern” and Western varieties of neofascism. The National Front party, for example, is once again threatening to take over the French Republic with its incredibly unrealistic claims to help reverse the neoliberal, globalization trend in the European Union by re-imposing an old-fashioned, “united Gaullist” vision of an exclusively Western-Christian France. Apparently, they intend to achieve that goal by simply expelling all the corrupting immigrants from the Muslim countries and Eastern Europe (especially the Roms). Neofascism is indeed a lot worse than neoliberalism, but neoliberalism is definitely part of the problem, because it has succeeded quite admirably in making neofascism popular again.

Which plays quite nicely into the hands of the radical Islamic denunciation of Western ethnocentrism, promoted by such movements as “Les indigènes de la République” in France, who do not think that “racialized minorities” such as Muslims or Black people living in the West should have to live up to the same standards as their White, European-origin, counterparts. They think that Black women, for example, should be “allowed” by White feminists to spend a lot more money on beauty products because White racists have always thought that Blacks could never be beautiful. They also claim that Muslim women in the West should not be criticized for wearing symbols of female oppression, such as the hijab, because they are only wearing such garments to push back against White-racist rejection of their Islamic culture. The same organization also believes that it is quite all right to accuse the cartoonist victims of Islamic terrorism at Charlie Hebdo as “Zionists”, to condemn all forms of “deviant” sexuality, and to oppose inter-racial marriages for reasons of cultural preservation.

In reality, those reactionary people are simply using “reverse racism” to slightly disguise their own “Eastern” forms of neofascism. Even White judges in Western countries, for example in the Canadian province of Ontario, are also (astonishingly) guilty of the selfsame “reverse racism”. Especially when they deliberately give lighter sentences to wife-beaters and to spouse murderers of Black or of indigenous origins, than to Whites convicted of similar crimes, in order to “compensate” for the negative effects of White racism on minority males.

In the final analysis, all the competing ideologies mentioned in this text, such as religion, neoliberalism, State capitalism and neofascism, are merely non-scientific manifestations of competing varieties of philosophical idealism. Each “ideal” world-view tries to substitute invented (manufactured) facts for natural (material) facts, always trying to impose its projected will or wish fulfilment not only on reality, but also on all the other, competing visions. Ideological history then becomes nothing else than a kind of vector analysis of the relative strengths of all those competing forces, at any particular place or time. According to each one of those ideologies, the best possible situation that professional ideologues can provoke is when the perceived contrast is greatest between material reality and idealistic projection, provided that the latter wins the day in spite of everything.

An example of such a “perfect” confrontation would be showing of a group of jihadists preparing to cut off an innocent “unbeliever’s” head, while forcing their victim to recite the verses in the Koran that proclaim that Islam is one hundred percent opposed to the massacre of innocent people. The violent contrast between what is really happening, Islamists deliberately killing an innocent person, and their religious projection of its idealistic opposite, “this is for Allah and not just to make us feel like dominant males”, then becomes the highest possible realization of “alternative facts”, for that particular ideology. Much in the same way as what happens when a rapist’s lawyer succeeds in getting him off by arguing that the victim “provoked” the rape by wearing a short skirt, or something to that effect.

What is important to the fabricator of fake facts is total success in imposing his or her will on reality. Not only must the victim be successfully victimized, but he or she must be seen to be “enjoying” or “agreeing with” his or her own victimization. This is what the psychopathic behaviour of every successful ideologue depends on, getting each individual and society as a whole to accept the turning of reality on its head as being “normal”, and to condemn material reality itself as being the pathological interpretation of events, instead. Total victory for passionate untruth.

People should therefore be proud of such abominations as ethnic imperialism, religious fundamentalism, capitalist exploitation, tax evasion, elitist “communism”, neoliberalism, neofascism, "reverse" racism, sexist “equality”, and all the other different kinds of alternative facts, rather than being proud of their undying opposition to any of those things. All the theoretically opposite varieties of reactionary behaviour have precisely the same roots, which is to say doing the most violence possible to the largest possible number of innocent people, with the added pleasure of getting them to admit that their suffering is, after all, only for their own good. Which is why apologists for evil always run around proclaiming that everyone is equally guilty of every sin, and not just the obvious perpetrators.